Isaiah chapter 42, verse 1, Behold my
servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in
whom my soul delighteth.
I want to link with that some of
the most familiar words from the lips of
that self, recorded by Matthew in his gospel,
chapter 11, verse 28, Come unto me, all
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of
me, for I am meek and lowly in
heart, and ye shall find rest unto your
soul.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden
is light.
Behold my servant.
And as we proceed a little further in
this matter of servanthood and service, we are
going to take a look at this model,
pattern, representative self, and learn, I trust,
something of servanthood and service from it.
The words which we have read from the
gospel have been mainly used for preaching
to the unseen.
I don't think I have ever heard a
message on those words otherwise than to the
unseen.
They are almost universally and exclusively used as
a gospel appeal, as it is called.
And I am not questioning the right of
that, but I want to point out that
those words were addressed to the people who
call themselves the people of God.
They were addressed to Israel.
They were spoken to the Jews.
And their subject is not salvation.
Their subject is service.
It is to laborers burdened, weighed down
in their toil, their labor, that the appeal
was made.
And the very symbols used are the symbols
of service.
My yoke.
The yoke is the symbol of service, of
work, of labor.
And the real message there is this.
These people were striving to work.
They were toiling, laboring, as they intended for
God.
It was in relation to God that they
were thus burdened.
We know what the burden was.
It was the burden of the Lord to
the leaders of that nation.
And Jesus said, you bind heavy burdens and
lay them upon men's shoulders.
They are grievous to be borne.
And under that overwhelming weight of legal service,
they were bowed down and found no rest.
And Jesus, in this appeal, was only saying,
in other words, I can teach you how
to work to satisfaction, to joy, because all
this that you are in, you are doing,
you are striving after, doesn't get you anywhere.
I can teach you how to work and
get somewhere.
This is achieving nothing.
And there is nothing more heart-breaking than
to labor and toil and never accomplish anything,
never get anywhere, see nothing for it, and
there be nothing for it.
There is nothing more gratifying, heart-ravaging, than
to do work, really be in work, and
see that it's worthwhile, it's getting somewhere.
The toil, the labor, that gets there, that's
rest, isn't it?
Real rest is not sitting down doing nothing.
Real rest is seeing that all that you
do is wah-wah, reaching an end.
And that is exactly what Jesus was saying
to these people, come to me, learn of
me, and I will teach you the way
of service that is worthwhile and that gets
somewhere.
Learn of me.
All service, true service, for God takes its
nature from Christ.
Now, what I'm saying to you this time
may sound simple, but it is drastically testing
and discriminating.
Let me say at once, there is a
vast amount of what is called the work
of the Lord, or service for the Lord,
which is not getting there, and which is
not going through to God's end and achieving
his purpose and will be exposed at the
end as having missed the way.
A vast amount.
A great deal is on a purely and
merely personality basis.
Well, much could be said like that.
And there's a great deal going up in
smoke, so don't be deceived and don't make
any mistake, I am not this evening talking
about working for the Lord.
What is commonly and generally called the Lord's
work, the Lord's service, I am occupied and
concerned with what is true service to God.
The real nature of what is service to
God.
Does that need more careful defining?
You can have a little child who wants
to help mother, and oh how busy, what
a little busybody she may be.
What a lot of things she's doing.
Always such a good intention.
And seems to be so happy about it
all, helping mother, but poor mother.
Poor mother.
Rarely she is making more work than she's
doing.
Making more difficulty than she's clearing up.
Presently, when she's gone to bed, mother will
have to put all that work straight.
Clear up all that well intention.
That's simple enough, isn't it?
Yes, it's meant to be service, but it
isn't.
Mother's verdict is, well, it's meant for me,
but it's not really service to me.
There's a difference.
And the Lord may take that attitude, but
all that is meant for me.
I recognize how well intentioned it is, and
a good motive, but my word, it is
really not service to me.
It's not reaching the end that I have
at heart.
We've got to make that discrimination.
But these people were doing countless things as
they thought for God.
They only got to look into their rules
and regulations and all that they were doing
in their rites and ceremonies and what not
for God.
And it was all aborted.
It's getting over.
Came tremendous burden and toil.
Yes, for God.
But to such, Jesus said, learn of me,
learn of me, and I will teach you
the way of service that is service to
God indeed.
If we are going to learn, we have
to look at Him.
Not only listen to what He says, but
look at Him.
For I repeat, all true service to God
takes its nature from and is all a
matter of the knowledge and the understanding of
the Lord Jesus.
Yes, the knowledge and the understanding of Christ
is the essential basis of service.
You've got the force of death.
Upon the cross is the service of Christ
built in Christianity.
What do people mean when they say they're
going into the Lord's work?
Well, to go into the Lord's work, into
the Lord's service, put it how you will,
we must go to some institution, some college,
some place where we shall take lectures and
study and read up and then we'll be
qualified to go into the Lord's work.
Is that true?
Now without one moment undervaluing such teaching, instruction,
and training has its place.
I want to say this emphatically.
You may have all that you can get
in that way and still lack the essential
for serving the Lord.
All that is no guarantee that you have
got the essential to serve the Lord.
Take my yoke and learn of me.
Christ is a spiritual university.
Pardon me if I treat you as little
children reminding you of the very word itself.
Uni versity.
We are in a uni-verse.
People go to a uni- versity.
What is that?
Well, versum is just a line, isn't it?
A line.
And a verse is so many lines.
A uni-versity is a place where there
are so many or all the lines.
All the lines.
Every subject you want to know about.
There's this line.
You read history.
You read law.
You read this and that.
That's the line.
And all the lines meet in that particular
place just as in the uni-verse all
the lines of science are there.
It's a unity of all the lines.
Now when you go or we go to
the uni-versity we don't go on to
all the lines.
We go on to one.
We read art or law or history.
That's the line in all the lines of
the uni-versity.
But mark you when you come to the
Lord Jesus you come to a uni-verse
a comprehensive all inclusive center where you have
to learn a very great many things.
A vast amount there in Christ and you're
going on for all eternity learning Christ.
Christ is so comprehensive.
So many-sided.
So universal.
So inclusive.
There is no exhausting Him.
Those who have been on the way with
Him and in His school the longest greatest
number of years and even most concentrated and
devoted earnest in their application to know Him
the end of long years but they know
they've hardly started.
They haven't started.
Only at the beginning of the knowledge of
Christ.
When we begin to learn of Christ we
come into indeed a uni-versity and we've
got to read in every subject.
Now does that appal you?
Disconcert you?
Well it need not.
It need not.
You've got all eternity the ages of the
ages for it.
And the blessed thing about this is that
He takes us a bit at a time.
He doesn't cram us.
There's no cramming in Christ.
Some of you know what cramming means, don't
you?
No cramming here.
No forcing.
He takes us a bit at a time.
And sees to it that we just know
that.
Maybe a small thing comparatively it's important.
There's nothing unimportant here.
He takes us in hand and holds us
until we know that.
And it is not an end in itself
that we should know it.
This is education for vocation.
Make no mistake about it.
The whole of this life here shorter or
longer is a part of our education for
eternal vocation.
Probably that is the chief feature about our
life here.
For one thing becomes very clear before you've
got very far the Lord is far far
more concerned about your spiritual education than he
is about how much or how many things
you do for him.
He is quite prepared to take you out
of all the doing to see to it
that you are learning.
And the Lord makes the doing so often
our education.
The doing is not the end.
The education is.
For the vocation lies ahead.
It is unto the ages of the ages.
Learn of me how great Christ is.
You and I will discover more and more
as we go along.
The early stages of our Christian life we
think we know enough to go out.
But as we go on the fact is
that we feel that we'd better get back
and learn something and not go quite so
fast.
We don't know what we need to know.
Better to draw back.
Well now what I'm saying if you realize
it is this that this learning servanthood and
service is not an academic thing nor is
it a verbal thing.
It is by reason of a vital spiritual
union with Christ.
It is learning a person if you can
grasp that and hold it and hold it
always do.
It is not learning things.
It is not learning doctrines and truths.
It is not even learning scripture.
These things have their place.
But real service to God is going to
come out of learning Christ.
Learning Christ.
And that requires living with Him.
Well that He is the great servant needs
no arguing.
It was self-declared.
I am among you said He.
He the servant.
He spoke of those who take their seat
at the table.
He said I'm not one of those.
I am the servant to wait on you.
I'm here as a servant.
All in that classic phrase says about His
condescension from Heaven He took upon Him the
form of a bond slave.
A servant the authorized version.
Well it was self-declared that that is
the capacity in which He was in this
world.
With the garments of glory laid aside the
towel of service gathered the water of purification
in the basin and in hand down on
His knees to potential servants to teach them
how to serve or the spirit of service.
So He was here when we have this
afternoon reminded ourselves of all those passages in
Isaiah's prophecy which predict His servanthood.
We need not go over again how many
there are of those pre-visionings in those
prophecies of Him as the servant.
What we want to do and must do
is to look at Him to see the
characteristics of the true servant in whose in
whom God's heart is delighted.
And I want to say first of all
about Him and therefore about all who will
be or would be true servants of God
in the true servanthood that He was first
of all marked by a divine compulsion a
divine compulsion.
Let it be understood at once do take
this to heart there is nothing voluntary about
this.
There is nothing voluntary about this.
If you do come in and it seems
that you are doing it by offer even
that must be the result of a compulsion.
He is here described as a bond slave.
That's the original term for our English word
servant.
A bond slave not a volunteer a bond
slave is not a volunteer at all.
There is nothing about this that is optional.
There is nothing about it that is casual.
A bond slave is purchased owned possessed and
without any rights of his own.
That's a bond slave.
A bond slave has his very life bound
up with his position as a bond slave.
He hasn't got a life of his own.
Let one of those bond slaves of old
escape and run away anybody can kill him.
He can be killed.
His life can be taken and no fuss
made about it.
It's a recognized thing as a bond slave
his life his own life is forfeit one
way or the other.
It's either for his master or it will
be taken from him or can be.
This is a tremendous thing this bond slave
idea.
Yes.
The bond slave was branded.
Branded.
The brand was not the brand of his
own rights to himself the brand of his
master or of that authority to which he
was given.
Paul said I bear branded in my body
Paul would in his constant usage of this
very term concerning himself the bond slave of
Jesus Christ would repudiate any suggestion that he
had a life of his own that he
had any rights of his own for me
to live which Christ was a matter of
life or death this service.
It's rather different, isn't it?
Common ideas servanthood or Christian service you can
resign if you don't like it you can
change from one place to another if you're
not pleased run away do anything today without
any the true servant of Jesus Christ
if you learn of him you will find
this to be true all these things were
true of the Lord Jesus need I, need
I say but it was not the compulsion
of law it was not the compulsion of
the labor tribunal directed to this or that
it was the compulsion of heart the compulsion
of love it was the captivity of the
will his will was in the
slavery of the father how he emphasized that
I came not to do my own will
the will of him that sent me my
meat and my drink my very subsistence is
to do the will of my father from
beginning to end it was the complete captivation
of his will by the will of another
of another will only such servanthood
really reaches God's end serves God's end it
really is this dear friends or has got
to be this a deep down urge of
a sense of destiny ye did not choose
me but I chose you and sent you
or ordained you that you should go and
therefore something has happened that did not take
its rise in us we did not decide
out from ourselves to go into the Lord's
work into Christian service a deep down urge
you know what that means?
remember many years ago when I used to
read fiction interesting books I was very interested
in some books by a writer who perhaps
this generation would not know called Jack Lund
and one of his books was The Call
of the Wild and it was about a
wolf dog which had become domesticated and attached
to a home and a family but in
the blood of this dog it was always
the wild the wild and while he was
lying there on the hearth she was groaning
and screaming his whole being was under tension
and his teeth and his lips were moving
Jack Lund called it The Call of the
Wild that although here in these pleasant surroundings
and circumstances that wild to which he belonged
by nature was ever pulling ever calling he
could never never be wholly here because he
belonged there is that a good illustration?